Advancing working memory research through cortico-cortical transcranial magnetic stimulation.

The neural underpinnings of working memory (WM) have been of continuous scientific interest for decades. As the understanding of WM progresses and new theories, such as the distributed view of WM, develop, the need to advance the methods used to study WM also arises. This perspective discusses how building from the state-of-the-art in the field of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), and utilising cortico-cortical TMS, may pave the way for testing some of the predictions proposed by the distributed WM view.

Sacroiliac Joint: Function, Pathology, Treatment, and Contribution to Outcomes in Spine and Hip Surgery.

➢ Low back pain has a lifetime incidence of up to 84% and represents the leading cause of disability in the United States; 10% to 38% of cases can be attributed to sacroiliac joint (SIJ) dysfunction as an important pain generator.➢ Physical examination of the SIJ, including >1 provocation test (due to their moderate sensitivity and specificity) and examination of adjacent joints (hip and lumbar spine) should be routinely performed in all patients presenting with low back, gluteal, and posterior hip pain.➢ Radiographic investigations including radiographs, computed tomography, and magnetic resonance imaging with protocols optimized for the visualization of the SIJs may facilitate the diagnosis of common pathologies.

A Scoping Review of Interventions Aimed at Reducing Fear of Falling in Older Adults With Orthopedic Conditions.

Background And Purpose: Fear of falling (FoF) is a persistent anxiety regarding the risk of falling, which can even impact individuals without a history of falls. Fear of falling has been associated with decreased physical functioning and increased risk of falls. Most interventions have focused on reducing FoF in healthy older adults.

Quality of life measures for people following stroke: a structured content review.

Introduction: Patient Reported Outcome Measures (PROMs) are used widely to collect patient perspectives on their Health-Related Quality of Life (HRQoL) after stroke. Existing reviews on PROMs typically report the psychometric properties but rarely focus on the content validity. We performed a structured review of the content of items of stroke-specific HRQoL outcomes.

PEDOT:PSS-Facilitated Directionally 3-D Assembled MXene-Based Aerogel for High-Performance Chemoresistive Sensing & Breath Analysis.

MXene has garnered growing interest in the field of electrochemistry, thanks to its unique electrical and surface characteristics. Nonetheless, significant challenges persist in realizing its full potential in chemoresistive sensing applications. In this study, a novel unidirectional freeze-casting approach for fabricating a Poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) polystyrene sulfonate (PEDOT:PSS)-facilitated vertically aligned MXene-based aerogel with enhanced chemoresistive sensing properties was introduced.

Paradoxical attenuation of early amyloid-induced cognitive impairment and synaptic plasticity in an aged APP/Tau bigenic rat model.

The combination of amyloid beta and tau pathologies leads to tau-mediated neurodegeneration in Alzheimer's disease. However, the relative contributions of amyloid beta and tau peptide accumulation to the manifestation of the pathological phenotype in the early stages, before the overt deposition of plaques and tangles, are still unclear. We investigated the longitudinal pathological effects of combining human-like amyloidosis and tauopathy in a novel transgenic rat model, coded McGill-R-APPxhTau.

Essential and nonessential fatty acid composition and use in overwintering monarch butterflies.

Monarch butterflies (Danaus plexippus) undertake one of the most remarkable long-distance insect migrations, travelling thousands of kilometres to overwinter in the central trans-volcanic belt of Mexico. This study explored how monarch butterflies use essential fatty acids (EFA) and nonessential fatty acids (NFA) during overwintering. We collected 150 (male/female) butterflies from the Sierra Chincua wintering colony from the time of arrival (December 2022) to before departure (February 2023) and analysed their lipid content.

Umbrella Sampling MD Simulations for Retention Prediction in Peptide Reversed-phase Liquid Chromatography.

Reversed-phase liquid chromatography (RPLC) is an essential tool for separating complex mixtures such as proteolytic digests in bottom-up proteomics. There is growing interest in methods that can predict the RPLC retention behavior of peptides and other analytes. Already, existing algorithms provide excellent performance based on empirical rules or large sets of RPLC training data.

A single-center learning curve for stereotactic laser amygdalohippocampotomy and a surgical framework to manage failures.

Objective: Stereotactic laser amygdalohippocampotomy (SLAH) is a minimally invasive procedure for mesial temporal lobe epilepsy that preserves more tissue than open procedures. As a result, although patients have better functional outcomes, more patients do not achieve seizure freedom. The rate at which this occurs is evolving with improved surgical practices.

Interplay between β-propeller subunits WDR26 and muskelin regulates the CTLH E3 ligase supramolecular complex.

The Pro/N-degron recognizing C-terminal to LisH (CTLH) complex is an E3 ligase of emerging interest in the developmental biology field and for targeted protein degradation (TPD) modalities. The human CTLH complex forms distinct supramolecular ring-shaped structures dependent on the multimerization of WDR26 or muskelin β-propeller proteins. Here, we find that, in HeLa cells, CTLH complex E3 ligase activity is dictated by an interplay between WDR26 and muskelin in tandem with muskelin autoregulation.

Development of metal-organic framework biocomposites from chitosan as drug delivery vehicles: In vitro evaluation on HeLa and SH-SY5Y cell lines.

In modern times, achieving precise drug delivery through a safe and stable carrier remains a significant challenge. In this study, we synthesized a novel ligand based on a guanazole Schiff base and subsequently developed new metal-organic framework (MOF) named UWO-1 through a reaction involving zinc acetate. At the same time, curcumin (CUR) was loaded onto the newly synthesized UWO-1.

Knowledge is not all you need for comfort in use of AI in healthcare.

Objectives: The adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare is rapidly expanding, transforming areas such as diagnostics, drug discovery, and patient monitoring. Despite these advances, public perceptions of AI in healthcare, particularly in Canada, remain underexplored. This study investigates the relationship between Canadians' knowledge, comfort, and trust in AI, focusing on key sociodemographic factors like age, gender, education, and income.

Partial or Focal Brachytherapy for Prostate Cancer: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.

Introduction: Recent advances in image-guided brachytherapy have allowed for treatment volume reduction in the treatment of prostate cancer, with the aim to optimize disease control and reduce toxicities. This systematic review reports on the efficacy and safety of focal brachytherapy for treatment of patients with localized prostate cancer.

Methods: Medline, Embase, Web of Science and Cochrane were searched from inception to July 2023.

Electrochemiluminescence of ,'-Dimethylformamide Passivated Black Phosphorus Quantum Dots.

Black phosphorus quantum dots (BPQDs) have shown promising applications in biosensors and energy storage devices. However, the electrochemiluminescence (ECL) properties of pristine BPQDs in an organic system have rarely been reported. In this paper, ,'-dimethylformamide passivated BPQDs with a small size of 2.

Canada's First National Oral Health Research Strategy (2024-2030).

Recent years have seen significant positive changes and developments in oral health-related policy and data on oral health and oral health care in Canada. Simultaneously, on the international stage, the momentum for oral health and related research continues to build. These changes have led to an initiative to create Canada's first National Oral Health Research Strategy (NOHRS), which was recently published by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research-Institute of Musculoskeletal Health and Arthritis (Allison and Rock 2024).

Disentangling the relationship between Machiavellianism and social dominance orientation.

Background: Machiavellianism and social dominance orientation are two constructs associated with socially undesirable behavior and predictors of prejudice; however, their relationship has mainly been investigated through measures that only assess the antagonism dimension of Machiavellianism. Thus, this study aimed to disentangle their relationship using an instrument assessing agency and planfulness.

Participants And Procedure: Participants were 767 Brazilians aged 18 to 71 ( = 30.

CGRclust: Chaos Game Representation for twin contrastive clustering of unlabelled DNA sequences.

Background: Traditional supervised learning methods applied to DNA sequence taxonomic classification rely on the labor-intensive and time-consuming step of labelling the primary DNA sequences. Additionally, standard DNA classification/clustering methods involve time-intensive multiple sequence alignments, which impacts their applicability to large genomic datasets or distantly related organisms. These limitations indicate a need for robust, efficient, and scalable unsupervised DNA sequence clustering methods that do not depend on sequence labels or alignment.

Prion protein regulates invasiveness in glioblastoma stem cells.

Background: Glioblastoma (GBM) is an aggressive brain tumor driven by glioblastoma stem cells (GSCs), which represent an appealing target for therapeutic interventions. The cellular prion protein (PrP), a scaffold protein involved in diverse cellular processes, interacts with various membrane and extracellular matrix molecules, influencing tumor biology. Herein, we investigate the impact of PrP expression on GBM.

Ancient genomes reveal a deep history of treponemal disease in the Americas.

Human treponemal infections are caused by a family of closely related Treponema pallidum that give rise to the diseases yaws, bejel, pinta and, most famously, syphilis. Debates on both a common origin for these pathogens and the history of syphilis itself has weighed evidence for the "Columbian hypothesis", which argues for an American origin, against that for the "pre-Columbian hypothesis", which argues for presence of the disease in Eurasia in the Medieval period and possibly earlier. While molecular data has provided a genetic basis for distinction of the typed subspecies, deep evolution of the complex has remained unresolved due to limitations in the conclusions that can be drawn from the sparse paleogenomic data currently available.

Synovial innate immune exhaustion is associated with worse pain in knee osteoarthritis.

Objective: Uncontrolled pain remains a major clinical challenge in the management of knee osteoarthritis (OA), the most common disabling joint disease. Worse pain is associated with synovial innate immune cell infiltration (synovitis), but the role of innate immune regulatory cells in pain is unknown. Our objective was to identify synovial innate immune cell subsets and pathophysiologic mechanisms associated with worse pain in patients with knee OA.

Self-Immolative Polymers Derived from Renewable Resources via Thiol-Ene Chemistry.

The development of polymers from renewable resources is a promising approach to reduce reliance on petrochemicals. In addition, depolymerization is attracting significant attention for the breakdown of polymers at their end-of-life or to achieve specific stimuli-responsive functions. However, the design of polymers incorporating both of these features remains a challenge.

Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease: A case report.

Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD) is a rare, fatal neurodegenerative disorder that is caused by prion proteins. Patients often present with rapidly progressive dementia, ataxia, myoclonus, memory impairment, visual problems, and changes in personality. In this case report, we aimed to address the course of a 62 year old female who presented with progressive decline in cognitive function and died within 6 months of presentation.

Analytical Validation and Performance Evaluation of Amplicon-Based Next-Generation Sequencing Assays for Detecting and Other Gene Amplifications in Solid Tumors.

Background: Targeted next-generation sequencing (NGS) panels are increasingly being utilized to identify actionable gene amplifications (copy number > 4) among solid tumors.

Methods: This study validated the analytical performance of two amplicon-based NGS assays, the Oncomine Comprehensive Panel (OCAv3) and the Oncomine Focus Assay (OFA), for detecting gene amplification in formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded (FFPE) tumors of varying cellularity. OCAv3 was assessed for amplification detection in 756 FFPE samples comprising various tumor types.